[thelist] What Are Stop Words?

[Maximillian Schwanekamp]

Jono Young wrote:

> From Search Engine Watch:
> http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/article.php/2156061
>
> The article does not explain where these "markers" should be used.
> Does the above mean that when writing Meta Tags, Alt tags, etc., that 
> if you do need to use a number of articles, such as "the" that it is 
> better to leave them out and replace then with a marker, such as *?  
> If so, is "*" the appropriate marker to use?

For Alt tags anyway, the text should be for human consumption.  The 
whole point of Alt is to give text content when the visual content 
cannot be viewed (due to browser limitation, network error, user's 
physical disability, etc).  Meta content is fairly worthless outside of 
intranet environments; it seems misplaced effort to aim for keyword 
density by replacing "stop words" with * in meta content.

-- 
Maximillian Von Schwanekamp
Dynamic Websites and E-Commerce
NeptuneWebworks.com <http://www.neptunewebworks.com/>
voice: 541-302-1438
fax: 208-730-6504